Human Rights Law Commons^™

Fundamental Rights In The "Gray" Area: The Right Of Privacy Under The Minnesota Constitution, Michael K. Steenson

Faculty Scholarship

This Article explores the constitutional aspects of Minnesota privacy law. Part II briefly explains federal privacy law to provide a baseline for consideration of privacy law in Minnesota. Part III examines the right of privacy as it has evolved in the Minnesota common law. Part IV evaluates the Minnesota Supreme Court's application of federal privacy standards and then examines the court's decisions that outline the right of privacy under the Minnesota Constitution. Part V concludes by raising questions concerning the potential application of the court's concept of privacy under the Minnesota Constitution as applied to two areas: same-sex marriages and …

Parading Ourselves: Freedom Of Speech At The Feast Of St. Patrick, Larry Yackle

Faculty Scholarship

Three things are true. First, American society is now absorbed in yet another great civil rights movement, this one on behalf of gay, lesbian, and ambisexual citizens, which will lead ineluctably to the elimination of legal burdens on the basis of sexual orientation.' Change will come slowly, with much backing and filling, and at an awful price measured in human pain. Intolerance for the homosexualities that exist among us, and the homosexual behavior in which many of us engage, will persist in quarters where the law cannot reach.2 Yet private homophobia, deprived of legal sanction, will ultimately be discredited and …

Consensus, Coherence And The European Convention On Human Rights, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Eichmann Trial, The Jewish Question, And The American-Jewish Intelligentsia, Pnina Lahav

Faculty Scholarship

The abduction, trial, and execution of Adolf Karl Eichmann by the state of Israel, fifteen years after the shutdown of the crematoria at Auschwitz, challenged the American Jewish intelligentsia to confront the Jewish question.4 What does it mean to be a Jew in America and who is an American Jew? Is the Jewish history of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust also a part of American-Jewish history? Is there a lesson in the destruction of European Jewry-the triumph of anti-Semitism, the failure of assimilation-relevant to American Jews? Is there a national component to being Jewish? Are Jews a people? If so, is …

Corporate Culpability Under The Federal Sentencing Guidelines, Jennifer Moore

Faculty Scholarship

This Article examines the use of corporate culpability in the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and addresses three major questions: In light of the traditional unimportance of culpability in corporate criminal law, is corporate culpability an appropriate concern of the Guidelines? If so, how is corporate culpability best conceptualized? Finally, how do the Guidelines understand corporate culpability, and how close do they come to embodying this most satisfying theory? Part I of the Article discusses the principal reasons why culpability has been important at the trial and sentencing of individual criminals, and argues that similar reasons justify concern with culpability in the …

Risky Business: Setting Public Health Policy For Hiv-Infected Health Care Professionals, Leonard H. Glantz, Wendy K. Mariner, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

An analysis of the restrictive proposals provoked by the case of Kimberly Bergalis and four other patients apparently infected with HIV during the course of dental treatment reveals that they resulted from an inability to evaluate appropriately the infinitesimal risk of HIV transmission from practitioner to patient. The proposals also resulted from an effort to create risk prevention policy without appreciating the distinction between regulating things or procedures, which have no human rights, and regulating people, who have rights that should not be infringed without serious justification. This analysis demonstrates that the proposed restrictive policies are not justified because they …

A Constitutional Right Of Religious Exemption: An Historical Perspective, Philip A. Hamburger

Faculty Scholarship

Did late eighteenth-century Americans understand the Free Exercise Clause of the United States Constitution to provide individuals a right of exemption from civil laws to which they had religious objections? Claims of exemption based on the Free Exercise Clause have prompted some of the Supreme Court's most prominent free exercise decisions, and therefore this historical inquiry about a right of exemption may have implications for our constitutional jurisprudence. Even if the Court does not adopt late eighteenth-century ideas about the free exercise of religion, we may, nonetheless, find that the history of such ideas can contribute to our contemporary analysis. …

Toilets As A Feminist Issue: A True Story, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Japanese International Law 'Revolution': International Human Rights Law And Its Impact In Japan, Kenneth L. Port

Faculty Scholarship

Some observers have argued that because of a lack of enforcement powers, international law has relatively little impact on the conduct of nations and, in fact, may not be "law" at all. Others have inquired whether legal norms which underlie international human rights law have any influence on the domestic law of signatory nations. This article argues that international law can profoundly influence the development of the domestic laws of nations regardless of the lack of coercive enforcement powers. This point becomes clear through a consideration of Japan's experience in adopting and internalizing international law norms.

Simple Justice: Humanitarian Law As A Defense To Deportation, Jennifer Moore

Faculty Scholarship

Each year, thousands of persons fleeing situations of military conflict in their home countries are denied refuge in the United States. These denials result in part from an asylum adjudication process that requires applicants to show that they are persecuted on an individualized basis, rather than that they fear generalized conditions of violence. Jennifer Moore explores the development of the humanitarian law defense to deportation, which seeks to compel immigration courts to recognize and apply international humanitarian law. Part I describes the evolution of the humanitarian law argument in immigration courts. Part II considers the relationship between humanitarian law and …

Lesbian And Gay Rights As Human Rights: Strategies For A United Europe, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

International Human Rights Law In Soviet And American Courts, Lori Fisler Damrosch

Faculty Scholarship

To what extent should domestic courts apply international law – specifically the international law of human rights? I would like to examine this question with reference to two very different states: the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States. For quite distinct reasons, neither of the two has yet fully embraced the idea of direct application in national tribunals of the body of international law that regulates the relationship between human beings and their own governments. As the post-Cold War era unfolds, it is time to ask whether either or both of these erstwhile adversaries might finally be …

Finding A Consensus On Equality: The Homosexual Age Of Consent And The European Convention On Human Rights, Laurence R. Helfer

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Corruption, Legal Education And Change In West Africa: A Broader View Of Human Rights, Suzanne B. Goldberg

Faculty Scholarship

"Will we ever move again?" I wondered as I sat with my knees jammed into my chin, sore from the long and bumpy ride on the wooden plank which lined the back of a "bush taxi" – the only public transport between villages in Northern Mali. The "taxi" was actually a rusty and roadworn pickup truck packed with more than two dozen men, women and children, more than I ever imagined could fit in the small, flat space between the cab and the tailgate. "Why are we stopping now?" I smiled at myself as I felt a sense of exasperation …

Restricting The Flow Of Asylum-Seekers In Belgium, Denmark, The Federal Republic Of Germany, And The Netherlands: New Challenges To The Geneva Convention Relating To The Status Of Refugees And The European Convention On Human Rights, Maryellen Fullerton

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Unions And Urinalysis, Deborah A. Schmedemann

Faculty Scholarship

Many private employers seem to be busy deciding whether and how to test employees for drug use. Presumably most of these decisions are made by management acting alone. However, in unionized workplaces—one out of five private sector employees are represented by unions—federal labor law prescribes a different method. That method features collective bargaining by unions and management to set the rules, the use of a private third-party neutral to resolve disputes which arise under those rules (arbitration), and relatively little involvement by the government (the National Labor Relations Board, legislatures, and the courts). This system that labor law prescribes for …

Nicaragua: United States Assistance To The Nicaraguan Human Rights Association And The Nicaraguan Resistance, Suzanne B. Goldberg, Lee Crawford, Kevin Reed, John Tennant

Faculty Scholarship

The question of providing aid to the Nicaraguan Resistance has been significant to United States human rights policy throughout the Reagan Administration. Although events have changed repeatedly during the winter of 1988, including a truce between the Nicaraguan Government and the Resistance and a Congressional decision not to provide military aid to the Resistance, the underlying policy issues remain constant. The Harvard Human Rights Yearbook presents two notes, infra, discussing the Military Construction Appropriations Act of 1987, which granted $100 million in aid to the Nicaraguan Resistance. The first note discusses the Nicaraguan Human Rights Association (Asociacidn Nicaraguense Pro-Derechos Humanos …

The Impact Of Medical Technology On The Pregnant Woman's Right To Privacy, George J. Annas

Faculty Scholarship

In the context of the bicentennial of the Constitution and science's relationship to society, it has been argued that "the advance of science and technology in the West has changed not only the relation of man to nature but of man to man."' This seemingly immodest statement may soon prove an understatement. In the arena of human reproduction, the marriage of science and technology in medicine may change not only the relationship of man to nature and man to man, but more significantly, the very concept of what it means to be human. This, in turn, will directly affect how …

New Frontiers: The Expansion Of International Criminal Law, Michael E. Tigar

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Dialectic Of Rights And Politics: Perspectives From The Women's Movement, Elizabeth M. Schneider

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Right To Privacy In Nineteenth Century America, David J. Seipp

Faculty Scholarship

On December 15, 189o, Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis, two young Boston law partners, published an article in the Harvard Law Review entitled The Right to Privacy. In that article, they proposed a remedy for invasions of personal privacy by the press. More than ninety years later, protection of privacy has become a major concern of the law. Legal scholars have organized the extensive body of case law into a coherent common law of privacy; the Supreme Court has enshrined the right to privacy in the "penumbra" of the Bill of Rights; and Congress has enacted additional safeguards.

The Right To Life, George P. Fletcher

Faculty Scholarship

In the theory of rights we repeatedly encounter the problem of reconciling someone's having a right with his properly suffering damage to the interest protected by the right. In the case of right to life, we have to assess numerous cases in which individuals are killed or allowed to die, and we wish nonetheless to affirm their right to life. These cases include killing an aggressor in self-defense, accidental homicide, terminating life-sustaining therapy, and capital punishment.

My program in this Article is to provide an account of how it is that those with a right to life may nonetheless be …

New York's Right Of Privacy – The Need For Change, Kent Greenawalt

Faculty Scholarship

In 1890 Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis wrote a famous article on the right to privacy. Concerned especially with newspaper publications about private and family matters, they urged that courts recognize an explicit right to privacy from unreasonable publicity. According to Warren and Brandeis, certain already recognized rights did in fact protect a person's wish to keep his private thoughts private, though these 1ights were founded on some more traditional legal theories. For example, the privilege of a writer of a letter to bar anyone's publication of the letter had been articulated in decisions as a property right, even when …

Human Rights In The United States: Two Decades' Development, David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Law Of Humanitarian Intervention: U.S. Policy In Cuba (1898) And In The Dominican Republic (1965), David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.